Before reading any of the "reviews", you should read the intro, the FAQ, the MOVIES I HAVE ALREADY SEEN list, and if you want, the glossary of genre terms and "What is Horror?", which explains some of the "that's not horror!" entries. There is also a handy recommendation thread that you can use to post suggestions for movies. And to keep things clean, all off topic posts are re-dated to be in JANUARY 2007 (which was before I began doing this little project) once they have 'expired' (i.e. are 10 days old).
Due to many people commenting "I have to see this movie!" after a review, I have decided to add Amazon links within the reviews (they are located at the bottom), as well as a few links to the Horror Movie A Day Store around the page, hopefully non-obstructively. Amazon will also automatically link things they find relevant, so there might be a few random links in a review as well. If they become annoying, I'll remove the functionality. Right now I'm just kind of amused what they come up with (for example, they highlighted 'a horror movie' in the middle of one review and it links to, of all things, the 50 Chilling Movies Budget Pack!!!).
Last but not least, some reviews contain spoilers (NOTE - With a few exceptions, anything written on the back of the DVD or that occurs less than halfway through the movie I do NOT consider a spoiler). I will be adding 'spoiler alerts' for these reviews as I go through and re-do the older reviews (longtime readers may notice that there is now a 'show more' which cleaned up the main page, as well as listing the source of the movie I watched, i.e. Theaters, DVD, TV) to reflect the new format. This is time consuming, so bear with me.
Thanks for coming by and be sure to leave comments, play nice, and as always, watch Cathy's Curse.
Has it really been a year since I saw Twilight and wondered what all the fuss was about (prompting me to get Twi-curious and read the book - which I finally finished last night)? Time sure flies when you’re watching legitimate horror movies that don’t draw the ire of every single male in the entire world, as if it’s some sort of sin that there is a franchise that doesn’t “belong” to them. Well, here we are with New Moon (the added “The Twilight Saga” title doesn’t actually appear on-screen), which furthers the non-adventures of vampires and werewolves who spend all their time fawning over a fairly dull girl rather than do vampire or werewolf type things.
If you recall, I had no real problem with the first film (or the book for that matter - it may have taken me a year but that was over a course of maybe 6-7 reading sessions, including the final 150 pages just last night). I am not the target audience for either (not that they are different; Twi-hards may argue otherwise, but there is nothing of actual significance that was changed from the book to the film), and yet I found mild amusement and occasional entertainment (not to mention eye candy for the film version) anyway. As I’ve said on numerous occasions, if something isn’t aimed at me, I can’t slam it if I don’t enjoy it, a distinction I wish people could make as they clog the internet with “Fuck Twilight” type sentiments. But, and this is important, I didn’t feel particularly compelled or engaged by any of it either. Who does Bella end up with? I don’t care. And judging by New Moon, that’s all the series is really about anyway - not vampires and werewolves.
I was hoping that this entry would step it up a few notches, especially with all the werewolves around. But like the vampires in the first film, they don’t really do a hell of a lot. We keep HEARING about potentially exciting things that they (or the vampires) are doing - killing hikers and such - but the film (and I assume the book, if this one is as faithful to the source material as the original was) never expands on these concepts. Even the one legit kill in the entire movie occurs in a quick flashback, as Jacob (the werewolf) just sort of mentions it to Bella later on. “Oh yeah we killed him.” Great, the closest thing the series has had to an actual villain and they give him the same “death scene” granted to Dr. Farthing in Dirty Work. After two movies, I still don’t know why they are vampires and werewolves to begin with - if Edward was just some straight edge dude and Jacob was, I dunno, a rodeo champion, you’d end up with the same exact movie (save for the sparkling).
Plus, the movie is more or less about Bella being torn between Edward (the vampire) and Jacob, and yet when the two suitors finally come head to head, they... do nothing. 130 minutes of pining and longing and moaning and mumbling comes down to two guys standing there (well, one guy and one wolf) glaring at each other. Come on, movie! Even if they don’t actually fight in the book, the movie doesn’t have to follow their lead. See, with a book you have the option of putting it down for a while and finding something more exciting to do. But we can’t leave the theater and watch the rest later - we’ve been sitting patiently for two hrs, you owe us a brawl.
To be fair, there is (slightly) more action than in the original. The highlight is a hilarious (but far too quick) fight between Jaco-wolf and some other wolf, and we are also blessed with the sight of Robert Pattinson being thrown around the chamber of the Volturi, which is sort of like the vampire government or something (they are pissed at him for letting humans know how silly it is to be afraid of vampires since all they do is walk around pouting and sparkle in the sunlight). And since Bella is convinced that if she puts herself in danger that Edward will come rescue her, we get a lot of her riding motorcycles and diving off cliffs and such. Granted, someone driving a motorcycle isn’t really “action”, but it DOES mean that Bella isn’t talking, so it’s an improvement.
Because really, the biggest problem I have with both movies (moreso in this one, though) is that Bella is a thoroughly uninteresting person, and the movie is 100% about her (I think there’s a only single scene in the entire film in which she isn’t present). At least in the first movie we had other characters talking in order to introduce themselves and other characters (Anna Kendrick is sadly given nothing to do in this film - five yard penalty, movie!), but with all of that out of the way, we just get Bella mumbling and whining for just about all of the film’s running time. I began to suspect that the reason Edward and the other vampires cannot hear her thoughts is because she didn’t have any. Now, I understand that her lack of a personality allows all of the devoted fans to see themselves in her, but I can’t see why they can’t at least give her an interest or two. Would it really be so hard to identify with a girl who liked The Beatles if you were more of an Elvis kind of girl? She’s more tolerable in the film’s 2nd act, when she starts hanging out with Jacob and starts to let her sarcastic personality show through a bit, but once he makes his feelings known she’s right back into mopey, helpless mode again, and now it’s even MORE intolerable because we already dealt with her being like that over Edward in the first part of the movie.
Exacerbating this is the fact that I am actually kind of intrigued by most of the other characters, and yet they are kept on the sidelines for the entire movie. With the exception of Alice (and thank you, various authors and casting people, for putting Ashley Greene in a central role for the film’s otherwise interminable third act), the Cullen family has a total of maybe 90 seconds in the film, even though the plot’s kick-off point involves Jasper (Jackson Rathbone) going apeshit when Bella gets a paper cut. Where do they all go? How do they cure Jasper’s bloodlust? How does Edward feel about his brother trying to eat his woman? These questions are not only unanswered - they’re barely even asked. But if you want to know what Bella does from the months of October-December, the movie gives you that (in the film’s most idiotic scene, she sits by her window as the months go by in montage - and despite tell-tale signs like falling leaves, Halloween decorations, and snow, we still get on-screen titles telling us what month it is. Thanks, I couldn’t tell for myself).
They also don’t really develop any of the werewolf folk, who are again, far more interesting (theoretically) than Bella. I couldn’t even tell if Jacob was turned into a werewolf in this film or if he already was one, and there’s some nonsense about thrill-seeking werewolves that he doesn’t get along with that, again, goes nowhere. And poor Graham Greene pops up as a guy who is seemingly human but knows about the wolves and tries to help keep their existence under wraps, but the movie never bothers to explain that or give him any sort of back-story. Instead, he just covers a wolf-print in the woods before he falls down a hill and dies of a heart attack (a plot contrivance to help the “Edward thinks Bella died” subplot move along).
But for all of these problems, it’s no worse than the first one, in my opinion. For every problem, there is something that is improved (more action, more Charlie, less school). And while I missed Carter Burwell’s quite good “Lullaby” and other themes, the new score by Alexandre Desplat is quite good (at least, when you can hear it - they were seemingly hellbent on making sure every song on the soundtrack was featured prominently in the film). And even though it’s kept to a minimum, I still enjoy how welcoming the Cullens are toward Bella, as it’s far more interesting than the usual “She’s not one of us so we hate her” type relationship you might expect. Plus, the subject matter means that when Bella puts herself in danger, there actually IS a chance she can get seriously hurt or killed, because we know she can be brought back to life via vampirism (and if she was a more interesting character, this would mean the film would have genuine suspense at times; alas, I’m sure she’d be just as dull as a vampire as she is as a human). So there’s something.
Also, I would be a very happy boy if Face Punch was turned into a real movie. One could balk that the biggest action scene in a vampire/werewolf film occurs on a theater screen (actually off, we just hear it while we watch Jacob and Mike both attempt to hold Bella’s hand), but that one snippet is so over the top and ridiculous, I couldn’t help but wonder what the entire thing would be like. I also like all of the fake posters (one movie appears to be about a killer parking meter), though I swear I saw Pontypool thrown in there for good measure.
Speaking of being ridiculous, I must apologize to my fellow movie goers for laughing at “inappropriate” moments. Surprisingly, the mostly full crowd of mostly teenage girls was pretty tame for this 10 am opening day screening - a few gasps at a shirtless Jacob were about as loud as they got (compared to my crowd for the first film, who cheered every time Pattinson appeared on-screen, and sometimes even before if they knew he was coming). I, on the other hand, laughed for about ten minutes straight when Jacob instantly pulled off his shirt (one of only two he wears in the entire film - even Victor Salva would get uncomfortable after a while) to use as a bandage for Bella. I also chuckled heartily at every shot of Pattinson walking, as every single one of them is in slo-mo, to the extent where I began to wonder if he was just a slow walker.
So there you have it. I am no more (or less) interested in this saga than I was after I saw the first film, but since I paid to see it this time, I feel a bit disappointed (as disappointed as I can be when a movie I don’t really care about fails to make me care about it). Since I do think that Stephenie Meyer has created a few interesting characters (the Cullens, the Blacks, and hell, even poor Mike, the sod who for some reason wants Bella over Jessica), I can’t help but wonder how much better the films would be if the filmmakers weren’t so faithful to her novels, and instead used them as a springboard to tell more interesting stories that make good use out of all of the characters, instead of keeping them on the sidelines while the focus remains on her weakest creation (it’s sort of like Juno in that regard - I liked everyone else, but I don’t like Juno the film because I didn’t like Juno the character). Luckily, they are popular novels, and if Dracula, Frankenstein, etc are any indication, it’s possible that in 20 years or so, someone will find a way to make "Twilight" as compelling to everyone else as it inexplicably is to its hardcore fans. Til then - see you all at Eclipse, next summer!
I liked Basement Jack. It didn’t really do anything new, and like any movie, had some problems, but it just WORKED. It’s a straight up slasher movie, with all of the genre’s expected pitfalls (focusing on a character whose safety is never in question) and highlights (some cool kills, an interesting killer, etc) that so many modern filmmakers spend so much time trying to circumvent, rather than just make a good movie within those parameters.
For starters, it’s got style. Director Michael Shelton comes from a visual effects background, but rather than make a movie that exists to showcase his company’s work, he just makes his camera angles and cutting as visually exciting as any effect (in fact, ironically enough, some of the effects really suck - they seemingly have a tough time with getting machetes to look like they are really embedded in anything). There’s a terrific shot late in the film where our heroine searches a basement (with lightning from a storm outside providing all of the illumination), as she spins around looking only for the killer to appear behind her (revealed via flash).
It’s also got an unusual supporting cast - a bunch of cops. Likeable ones at that. They bicker and mock each other like the non-Riggs and Murtaugh cops in the Lethal Weapon movies do, except here they actually get to take part in the action (i.e. get killed - there’s a Terminator-esque spree near the end that’s pretty awesome). And since one is played by the always enjoyable Tiffany Shepis, you will at least care about one other person in the movie besides the obvious heroes, which is a rarity in modern slashers (where even the heroes are wretched - see: Zombie's Halloween II).
And while they go a little overboard with it, I like that the killer had a backstory that was about something besides why he wanted to kill these particular people. Slashers tend to either explain nothing (Halloween), or give the killer a very specific reason to kill these very specific people, and yet go to all the trouble of picking them off one by one while wearing a costume. This guy is fucked up due to some not-too-original mother issues, but his targets are anonymous and innocent families. And as a creepy touch, he props his victims up in poses (a little dead kid propped up in front of the TV, bound in video game wires? CREEPY AS FUCK). It makes up for his sort of tired Manson-y appearance at any rate.
We also have a final girl who is vulnerable yet tough right from the start. It’s not a problem for me, but when you think about it, most final girls suddenly become resilient only after all their friends are killed, so it’s kind of cool to have this almost sort of Sarah Connor-y type face a slasher, sort of hunting him throughout the film.
Finally, I dug the humor. Right off the bat we get a nice little reference to (the real) Halloween II, and there are other little nods to the series sprinkled throughout (as well as a score by Alan Howarth), including a final shot that seems to be recalling Michael's ambulance escape in Halloween 4. And as always, Shepis gets a few likely improvised laughs that give her character a bit of a personality the film doesn’t otherwise afford her (I don’t think the role was written for a known actress). I was also pleased to see the return of the Manager character from Evilution, as this film is from the same team. I didn’t care too much for that film, but I loved the Manager character and enjoyed seeing his return (and apparently he will be back in a third film titled Necropolitan, which is the name of the building where these two films took place - but are otherwise unrelated). I always liked the idea of movie characters drifting into other movies (best example would be Michael Keaton in both Out of Sight and Jackie Brown), but a device you never really see a lot.
So what’s not so good? Well like I said before, the kill effects are a bit on the shoddy side at times, which is kind of a bummer as that is one of the most important aspects of a slasher movie. And it drags a bit at times, particularly in the scenes where our heroine is accused of being the murderer herself. It’s one of those things where you know it can’t be true, so there’s little suspense to the proceedings. It works in say, Psycho II - we know Norman is nuts and we’re not seeing the face of the killer. The same can’t be said here, so I wish they hadn’t even bothered with the red herring.
And, I know that it’s supposed to be related, but I had the same issue with Evilution - ENOUGH with the goddamn Linda Vista Hospital! I think I have seen that front façade more often than I have seen the front of my own home. I understand it’s a cheap location that is almost always available for horror film crews, but it just feels like a lazy choice on the part of the filmmakers. Especially for a film that’s not even set in a hospital - are we to believe that there was no other building in all of Los Angeles that could double for an apartment building?
The DVD has a making of and a commentary with the producer/writer and the guy who played Jack (who also produced). Strange that the director isn’t there, but they talk about him in positive tones, so it doesn’t seem to be the result of some sort of rift between the director and the producers. It’s not the best track - they narrate the action and clarify plot points that weren’t questionable, and speak highly of all of the actors and such (they also echo my comment about Sarah Connor!). The making of (which DOES feature Shelton) primarily focuses on the cast and how great they are, and at 25 minutes, isn’t really the best way to spend your time unless you are a die-hard fan of the film.
In short, the reason I liked this slasher is because it went about its business like a regular slasher movie, without gimmicks or post-modern winking. It’s the type of movie I probably would have never saw had it not been for HMAD, but since doing that means I see so many soulless and worthless slashers, it’s also the type of movie where doing HMAD allows me to appreciate its strengths all the more.
As I am sick of writing “I haven’t read the source material” when it comes to reviewing Lovecraft adaptations, I went and read both “Dreams In The Witch-House” and “The Music Of Erich Zann” after I watched The Shunned House (Italian: La Casa Sfuggita), in order to better acquaint myself not only with the stories on which the film was based (along with the title story, which I could not find to read for free online so oh well), but with Lovecraft as well, whom I hadn’t given a look at since my early days in college (over a decade ago now!).
My opinion hasn’t changed much (at least, based on these two tales - if time allots (HA!) I will try to check out a few more and get a better idea of the whole scope), unfortunately. I find his prose slightly over-wordy, with far too many made up words to wrap my head around, and characters I never quite get a good handle on. The one-line summary for any of his stories is usually interesting to me (for example - “Witch-House” is about a guy who moves into a strange house and becomes increasingly drawn into its dark power, and is also apparently menaced by rats. Cool.), but the execution just doesn’t grab me the way Poe or King does. Sorry, HPL fans. I am trying though!
Anyway, The Shunned House is an odd fit for the Decrepit Crypt set. It’s still shot on low grade consumer video, but it’s A. largely competent on a technical level and B. pretty good to boot. There are a lot of problems, but you gotta grade these things on a curve, and there is definitely more genuine ambition and dedication to making a good film in any 5 minutes of this film than you can find on any other film on this set (with the exception of the legit 70s film Scream Bloody Murder (aka Matthew), which got tossed on the set (on this same disc in fact!) for reasons I’ll never understand).
The biggest problem with House isn’t the source material, surprisingly enough, but rather the production’s odd decision to shoot the film with Italian actors speaking English, despite the fact that they clearly don’t know how. Folks talking about being “poonished” (punished) or declaring “I ate rats!” (I think she meant “hate”) is, of course, worth a chuckle, but the script is dead serious, and thus the broken voices constantly distract away from the narrative. Although, there is nothing more awesome than hearing a woman shout in a thick Italian accent "Shut up; I'm telling you my fucking dream, shut up!"
Also distracting is director Ivan Zuccon's habit of switching from one story to another with little to no seamless bridge between them. See, the movie takes one HPL story (“Shunned House”) and makes it the sort of wrap-around for two other stories (“Witch-House” and “Eric Zann”), intercutting back and forth throughout the film. Sometimes it makes sense - the guy in the wraparound will start reading a diary of the hero from “Witch-House”, and it will fade to the guy writing that entry. But other times it just cuts from “Witch” to “Zann”, and the fact that all three stories take place in the same house and that all of the not very well lit actors sound alike due to using their forced English makes these transitions jarring and confusing.
But with a better director (or even editor) and actors speaking their native tongue, this would actually be a pretty damn good movie. The stories are interesting, and even though (as I have discovered) they aren’t entirely faithful to the source material, Zuccon (with co-writer Enrico Saletti) captures the atmosphere of the tales quite well. Again, the movies on the Decrepit set tend to be super cheesy and unparalleled in their terrible-ness, so to see a film with not only a real story but some legit scares on the same disc as Vampire Hunter is something of a minor miracle.
There are also a lot of creepy visuals to enjoy. A woman eating her own wrist, several bloodied folks (dead or alive) wandering about, etc. They seemingly forgot about the rat monster from “Witch-House” (which was adapted by Stuart Gordon in the first season of Masters of Horror, unfortunately I recall little about the episode anymore, other than that it was OK), but that’s forgivable - the budget is clearly low, and any attempt at a “monster” likely would have looked terrible. Zuccon was wise to keep the scares based more in reality (i.e. bloody people) and get the idea of the story across instead of the specifics.
So HPL fans will likely balk for changing the stories (actually the plots are the same, but they change everything else - setting, characters, etc), and of course, those who are used to Gordon’s productions will feel short-changed by this no-budget incarnation, but I found myself largely entertained by it. Some of it was a bit confusing, and like I said, the accents never stopped distracting me, but its heart was definitely in the right place, and unlike the other films on the set, I wasn’t appalled that the filmmakers expected people to pay money in order to watch it. And hey, it got me to read some Lovecraft, which makes it the Reading Rainbow of no-budget independent horror movies.
If you're not a Los Angeles resident or visitor, you might wonder what this New Beverly Cinema place I'm always rambling about is like. Well, wonder no more. While no video can ever fully capture the Bev's wonderful magic, the clip below comes pretty damn close. Enjoy!
A long-ass time ago, I interviewed Thora Birch for Train(which is STILL unreleased, and rightfully so), and she talked briefly about her next horror film, Deadline. Ms. Birch said, quote, “Brittany Murphy needs to write a book, she goes and stays in this house for a while to do it, and she discovers that there’s something in the house. And then she finds these tapes, and she’s watching this husband film his pregnant wife, and that’s me.” I was so confused by that that I had to keep rewinding the tape to make sure I was hearing her right. And it wasn’t until about halfway through the film that I remembered “Oh THIS was that baffling movie she was talking about!”, which unsurprisingly was about the time I started getting baffled as to what was going on.
Unfortunately it never quite recovers, and the ending could be considered a fine-able offense in some cultures. It’s an ambiguous ending, which is fine - but either outcome you accept as the “right” one means that other stuff in the film doesn’t make any goddamn sense, and that’s a big problem. (SPOILERS AHEAD) As the lady said, throughout the film Brittany Murphy is playing videos of Birch and Marc Blucas, a guy with major esteem issues who films his new bride seemingly 24 hours a day, and sees the deterioration of their relationship, ultimately leading to murder. Fine, but then the end suggests that they never existed and that everything was a figment of Murphy’s imagination. If so, how did she end up in the bathtub, and how did it get drained (we see Blucas put her in there, and then saved by Birch’s ghost)? Why does she have the necklace? So then, OK - then they are REAL, right? OK, then where did Blucas’ body go? And why does Murphy’s girlfriend see herself on the tape, instead of Blucas and Birch? See what I mean?
But even if the ending made total sense, the movie would still be largely pointless. It’s far too slow, for one thing, and I think there should be a rule that if your movie is about one person alone in a house for half its running time, then that person should be a good actor delivering an engaging performance. Murphy can be accused of neither. She was a bubbly and cute presence in stuff like Clueless, and wasn’t even that bad in Sin City, but she is positively dreadful here, walking around like a zombie, not bothering to have a genuine reaction to the occasional creepy shit she sees, and delivering what few lines she has with all the conviction of a deli guy calling the next number. And she even LOOKS like ass nowadays; not sure what the hell happened to her but I was kind of appalled at her appearance.
Birch and Blucas fare no better. This is Blucas’ third strike for HMAD (after the equally dull Killing Floor and the mind-blowingly awful Animals), and since the guy is also the focal point of the worst season of Buffy, I think I’m just going to avoid him from now on. Birch, on the other hand, is playing a character who makes little sense (why did she even marry this guy in the first place?) but is at least somewhat sympathetic, and is the source of the only all out ghost scene in the entire movie. And it’s better than Train, so she’s got that going for her. Still, I wouldn’t turn down Andy’s Monkey Trouble 2 pitch if it ever presents itself again...
I think we also need to put a stop to any movie or book that involves an author isolating themselves in order to write his/her next book, and how bad this turns out for them. Seriously, how many times have we seen this plot setup? Yes, The Shining is a classic in both mediums, but for every Shining, there are a dozen Final Drafts and Deadlines. Ditto for characters "creepily" playing "Moonlight Sonata" (usually in the middle of the night, waking another character). Last I checked, there are hundreds of pieces of classical music to play on the piano, I don't know why filmmakers constantly feel the need to fall back on this one.
And this is of no issue to the filmmakers (as far as I know), but the DVD ratio is as big of a mystery as the film’s conclusion. It’s not anamorphic (even though the trailer at the top of the disc is), and at full-frame it appears to be a 1.85:1 ratio. But it looked vertically stretched, so I stretched it to fit the screen, giving it an approximate 2.35:1 ratio, which looked better but now slightly stretched horizontally. So my guess is that it was shot at 2.20:1 for some reason (a very rare shooting aspect) and the DVD screener folk didn’t know what to make of it. But I’ll be damned if wondering about that wasn’t more entertaining than anything on-screen.
Since the DVD has no extras, I went online to see if I could dig up any information on it (for example, why it existed in the first place), but found nothing. I DID find some hilarious rumors about Murphy though, such as a press conference where she began singing and putting napkins over her face as she laid down on the floor, and how she also lost the role of Tinkerbell in Disney’s new franchise, due to her dating ex-cons (the article also mentions that the film itself needed work, due to having “too many” lesbian innuendos - what the?) and being possibly hooked on drugs. But worse than all of that, I also learned that her next horror movie is directed by Mike Feifer, which is possibly the saddest fate of all.
I still think it's worth pointing out that as of last Thursday, November 12th, I have successfully kept to my "promise" of watching a horror movie a day for 1000 days in a row (which makes today 1005!). Since beginning on February 7, 2007, I only missed a single day, which was the following Friday (February 16th). Since then, birthdays, anniversaries, visiting relatives, holidays, weddings, travels, Comic Cons, light narcolepsy, editing jobs, video games, an addiction to Spider Solitaire, and "general malaise"* have been no match for my resolve! Sure, there have been close calls, and sometimes said narcolepsy forces me to rewatch part of a movie the next day, but my initial concept ("Every day, at some point between 12:01 am and 11:59 pm, I will watch a horror movie that I have never seen or have completely forgotten about.") has been lived up to. Go me! Here's to the next thousand!
I'd also like to point out that Day 1000's (not MOVIE 1000, I passed that a while ago due to double/triple movie days and such) movie was THE UNSEEN, which of course is a good word to describe the movies I've watched. Weird.
BC
*If you get that reference, you're awesome. Or you know how to use the search engine.
I have a theory, and if you have time and wish to investigate it further for me, I’d be most obliged. The theory is this: the 1995 film Heat, while pretty great, is cursed. Witness the careers of its four main stars: Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro have only made a couple of good films since, Tom Sizemore has been battling drug/hooker addictions for the past decade and had a reality show about how he was “fighting back” in order to star in the god-awful Bottom Feeder, and Val Kilmer seemingly appears in more DTV movies a year than Wesley Snipes and Jean Claude Van Damme combined. Christ, The Thaw is one of TWO thrillers about global warming that the former A-lister has appeared in this year alone!
But the real shame is that The Thaw is actually a pretty good movie, and could have conceivably gotten at least a limited theatrical release - if Wind Chill did, there’s no reason why other “small” horror films like this couldn’t. Plus it stars Martha MacIsaac, who was the main love interest in the mega-hit Superbad as well as the best friend in the remake of Last House On The Left. And Kilmer still has the occasional big release (Déjà Vu is the last one that comes to mind, unfortunately, though he also appears in the upcoming MacGruber film). But maybe it’s for the best - the lowered expectations of a DTV horror film (not to mention one lumped in a “series” with a bunch of other titles, which suggests it couldn’t have found its way into homes on its own accord) are probably why I was able to enjoy it as much as I did.
The first thing that drew me in was that the film had a Crichton-esque setup. Science gone amok, a few experts grouped with a few “everyman” type folks, a confined setting... it’s the same template as "Jurassic Park", "Sphere", "Prey", "Congo"... not the worst stories to be reminded of (OK, maybe "Congo" I can do without). Hell there’s even a bit of "Timeline" in there, as our main heroes are really a group of students, as well as MacIsaac, the spoiled and estranged daughter of Kilmer’s character, who has come to the base in order to settle some nonsense about her mother’s inheritance. I would have liked it if the students actually did a bit of what they were there for before all hell broke less (especially since I am still a bit unsure what exactly they were supposed to be doing anyway), but on the flipside, it’s cool how they introduce what seems like the main group and then kill them off, leaving just the kids to tackle the problem (it’s a far more successful attempt to trick the audience than the Friday the 13th remake managed).
And I like that the insects were normal sized insects, instead of oversized mutant things that are never as terrifying as the type of bugs I might find near my car (or, in a super creepy moment, on my couch - it was a house spider, but still - gah! Bad timing, little now-dead spider!). The film’s queasiest gag is given away on the trailer (a bug pokes its head out of a hole on a girl’s forehead, only to retreat when someone attempts to pull it out), but there are a few other choice moments that will make Entomophobics run out of the room crying, particularly the male ones.
Indeed, one male character IS an Entomophobe, and it’s a shame that they didn’t put him in danger more often. Traditionally, the main character would be the one with the phobia, and he would have to overcome it in order to save the day (i.e. Jeff Daniels in Arachnophobia, which I really need to revisit). But here it’s a guy you know will probably die anyway, because he’s not the main guy and he’s played by professional asshole character actor Kyle Schmid (the asshole from Joy Ride 2, The Covenant, History Of Violence...), and so they could have milked his eventual demise a bit and really played up his fear (i.e. by making him go into an infested room, or whatever). But they just sort of use his phobia as another means to make him look like an asshole.
I also liked that it had one of the Ashmore brothers (Aaron), but not the one from The Ruins (Shawn). Like The Ruins, there is a scene involving an Ashmore brother and someone losing an infected limb. And also, Shawn is about to star in his own snowbound horror movie, Adam Green’s Frozen. Those crazy Ashmores, always trying to one up the other. No offense to Aaron, but I think Shawn has the edge, since he was in X-Men and Aaron was a regular on Smallville (that one's gotta hurt...).
The only thing that really hurts the movie is a dumb final “twist” that hardly even makes sense, and stinks more of padding than anything else. Maybe if the character involved was already dead and this part of his character was merely discovered, it would be one thing, but since it involves him literally leaving a loved one to die for no reason, it just doesn’t work. I was also a little perplexed why well known character actors William B. Davis and Gary Chalk appear for a single shot each during the opening montage (playing pundits), and that’s it. I was thinking the film would end with more of their pontificating, but alas it just sets up a sequel in the most obvious way ever. A shame really; it’s a really good movie for 80 minutes and then the final 10 is just a series of missed opportunities, cliché plot developments, and a complete lack of bug action. How do you have a killer bug movie and let the requisite human villain die in an explosion? It would be like if Paul Reiser merely fell down an elevator shaft or something in Aliens.
The DVD has a pretty basic making of (Kilmer talks about how he drew on his life experiences to play an environmental nut - I assume he means all of the waste involved with the multiple reshoots for Island Of Dr. Moreau) and the aforementioned trailer, plus some stuff that’s on all of the Ghost House releases. It also contains one of the most misleading taglines of all time - “From the makers of the Evil Dead Trilogy!” the front of the DVD proudly exclaims. Yeah, well, no, it isn’t. The makers of the Evil Dead Trilogy are pretty much Sam Raimi, Robert Tapert, Bruce Campbell, Scott Spiegel, and Ivan Raimi, none of whom had fuck all to do with this film. The only connection is that this film, shot independently of any studio, was picked up for distribution by Ghost House, a company that Sam Raimi owns (but is usually too busy making Spider-Man films to have any real involvement with even the legit Ghost House productions such as Boogeyman). So that’s like three degrees away from the Evil Dead "makers". I know it’s a good way to hook people in, but it’s blatantly false and sort of insulting to the actual makers of this film - Mark A Lewis (co-writer/director), Michael W. Lewis (co-writer), and Rob Neilson, Trent Carlson, and Marry Anne Waterhouse (producers). And if anything, the studio should be trying to DOWNPLAY the involvement of a guy who has made some of the highest grossing films of all time and is beloved by nearly everyone whose ever liked a horror movie - all you’re doing is setting the audience up for something bigger/better than it is, instead of being honest and letting people discover a small, but surprisingly engaging and largely unique horror movie.
Yes, it’s true - I have never seen Re-Animator in its entirety. An attempt in high school ended in slumber, an attempt in college ended in everyone talking and eventually leaving the room entirely, and an attempt at the Rock n Shock convention in Worcester ended in “We can watch this at home, let’s go walk around”. So I’ve seen the first half hour of the movie at least three times, and still had no idea why a disembodied head seemed to be the film’s most memorable aspect (hell, I didn’t even understand why Jeffrey Combs got all the attention - I’d only seen about three of his scenes!).
So, once again, I have the New Beverly to thank for filling in a sad hole in my horror knowledge. A revival screening, attended by both Combs and Stuart Gordon (fresh from another performance of “Nevermore” in Hollywood - if you are in the area and you haven’t seen it yet - GO! NOW!!! It’s a perfect show.), allowed me to FINALLY see the film all the way through to the end. And it is testament to the film’s entertainment value (and, PERHAPS, the two coffees and two caffeinated sodas I drank before) that my awake to asleep ratio was well above my average; I estimate I only missed about 5-7 minutes of the 90 minute film (which began around 12:45 am). Go me!
As you probably all know, it’s a really great movie. While I was slightly underwhelmed with the same team’s From Beyond, Re-Animator has held up quite well; I never got a sense of that “I guess I saw this too late” feeling that I’ve gotten from a few other 80s films that I missed back then and finally got around to in the HMAD days (Night of the Demons certainly comes to mind). In short, it’s not nostalgia - this movie is actually quite good.
The West/Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott) dynamic is what really makes the film shine, even more than the effects/gore (which all hold up). Conventional writing would put the more interesting West in the forefront, but Gordon and Dennis Paoli wisely use him sparingly for the first half of the film, which allows you to solely identify with Dan. I guarantee any remake would cast some stiff in the Dan role and put West front and center, and that would be a mistake - he might be more interesting, sure - but his darkly humorous approach to everything (love the pencil scene) would probably grow wearisome after awhile if he was in every scene. Plus, I always like it when minor characters are explaining things to the hero, rather than the other way around; again, it’s an identity thing - if I’m putting myself in Dan’s shoes, it makes more sense to be learning about what’s going on at the same time he is.
And the gore, while largely backloaded (if you were to graph the insanity levels in this movie minute by minute, it would likely be a very straight, ever climbing upward line, not a rollercoaster up and down deal), is still pretty fantastic looking. The mid 80s were of course the heyday of great makeup effects work in horror movies, and Re-Animator’s effects rank up there with The Thing and The Fly. And kudos to the game cast for doing several of these scenes in the nude (male and female) - it’s not every day you see a bunch of naked corpses with gore appliances all over their bodies running around a morgue (and doing stuntwork to boot!).
It’s also the rare film of the era that doesn’t feel like it’s missing an act. So many 80s movies are simple “there’s a problem and then it’s solved” type affairs (The Lost Boys is a good example - Michael joins the vampires, immediately leaves, and then they fight. The end!), it’s almost nice to see one with actual subplots and a few twists, not to mention a more traditional three act structure. Of course, learning beforehand that it was the result of six Lovecraft stories being turned into one film sort of explains that, and that also makes the film impressive for another way - it never feels like an adaptation. The main characters are well-rounded, the supporting characters don’t feel like they are there just to appease fans of the book, the plot never feels rushed, etc. I haven’t read the stories, so I don’t know how closely the film follows them anyway, but it certainly seems like the filmmakers weren’t burdened by the source material at any rate.
With the film now seen, I was able to start going through the wealth of extras on the 2 disc DVD set that I had picked up a few years ago (it’s the green double case set from Elite, not the most recent release with the making of doc). There is nearly three hours’ worth of material on the 2nd disc, plus two audio commentaries. I listened to the track with Brian Yuzna and the primary cast (save the late David Gale), which was quite a lot of fun. They don’t bother with much actual information, just a few anecdotes, arguing over where things were shot (and in what order), and (mostly Combs here) taking a few jabs at the film (Megan (on-screen) “You never mentioned why you left Switzerland”; Combs: “Or why your hair has grown an inch since the last shot”). Gordon also provides a solo track, but I haven’t had time to listen to it yet.
However, if it’s anything like his interview with Yuzna on disc 2, I won’t want to bother. It’s of no fault to either man, but it’s 50 minutes long and only about half of that contains genuinely interesting information. But Elite didn’t bother to edit the interview down at all, so we also get a lot of them trying to remember people’s names, Yuzna rambling about another film he was going to make, etc. (and it’s out of sync to boot). Maybe if this is your all-time favorite movie this would be interesting (I probably wouldn’t mind Carpenter doing the same on a Halloween disc), but I would have liked to have seen them offer an edited version of the interview with just the highlights, and offer the longer one as a bonus to the bonus (sort of like the His Name Was Jason doc did). An interview with Paoli IS edited, and thus more appealing. He talks a bit about how they went about adapting it, as well as some of the stuff that didn’t make it. Then Richard Band talks for about 4856796 hours, and at one point more or less takes credit for the film having a comedic tone. Finally, Tony Timpone recites what he learned about the film by glancing at its IMDb page along with a story about how he was a +1 to see the movie back when he first started ruining Fangoria.
Band then re-surfaces in a far more interesting piece, since it includes his actual score. Sort of like a commentary, he talks about a few scenes and then they play with his score isolated. Since his main theme is such a direct copy of Bernard Herrmann’s Psycho score, it’s nice to see his other music (which is quite good) get its due (the entire score is available isolated over the movie on disc 1, for the record). Then we have about 25 minutes worth of deleted/extended scenes, including a nightmare scene that I’m not quite sure where it would fit in the narrative, but does give us another look at Barbara Crampton’s flawless body (I’m not being a pig - Pauline Kael said the same thing about her in her review!), so there’s something. Then there’s the usual collection of storyboards, stills, trailers/TVspots (best tagline ever: “Herbert West brought a lot of dead people back to life... and not one of them showed any appreciation.”), and cast bios.
It’s always good to see a revered film from 20+ years ago and find that it still works, especially on the big screen. It wasn’t until I saw Shockerthere that I truly realized how slow the first half is, something that’s probably immediately obvious to everyone without nostalgia clouding their judgment. Likewise, a friend lambasted me for not loving Motel Hell (which I saw for the first time at home, in 2007), only for him to agree it had lots of problems after it screened at the Bev earlier this year. Re-Animator, on the other hand, played as well to me now as it apparently had to all of my friends who have been telling me for decades to watch it. Hurrah!
“Brilliant”, “Classic”, and “Cronenberg[ian]” are among the many words used by critics to describe Deadgirl, and they’re not even all from horror sites (who eat up anything indie out of fear of looking like the corporate shills many of them are). So I was expecting something more to it than the synopsis (two guys find a zombie girl chained up in a basement and use her as a sex slave). Unfortunately, while it’s a pretty good movie, that really is all there is to it, and as it progressed I wasn’t enjoying it as much as I was wondering if they were ever going to kick it up a notch.
And they do, sort of, but it’s the type of thing that should have happened earlier, with the final third (or more) of the film about the repercussions. In other words, the first two acts should have been compressed into one, allowing more time for the far more interesting developments that occur when the film is just about finished. For example, throughout the film our heroes (for lack of a better term) are being menaced by a couple of jock douchebags, and they eventually discover the girl. And since once of them is stupid enough to think that this obviously diseased girl chained up in a basement would like to give him a blow job, he gets bit, and later turns into a zombie. This gives the most insane (or just plain horny) guy of the group the idea to “make” a new “deadgirl” to enjoy, which to me is far more interesting (and horrific) than the generic “two best friends who have taken different paths in life find themselves at odds over something” storyline that I’ve seen a million times, including in the recent Cirque Du Freak. But that’s a plot point that only surfaces in the film’s final twenty minutes, which doesn’t give it a lot of time to be explored. And the film’s final SHOT is an event that has been telegraphed practically since the film began, instead of being the start of a climax.
It’s also a film that only works if you accept that a. everyone’s an idiot and b. everyone knows exactly where people are at any given time. Even a quick shot of someone opening a condom before going to town on this thing would have added a dash of intelligence to these goons (especially when they are taking turns - ew), but the film offers no such thing. And a major plot turn occurs only because the person in question, for no reason whatsoever, apparently walks to the gas station on the outskirts of town where our now-villains are waiting to kidnap their new plaything. Why would they think to find the guys there?
But all of the problems I had were based on the script. As directors, Marcel Armiento and Gadi Harel do their job, which is elevating an uneven script into a good movie. They are a little too fade/cut-to black happy (I’d say at least three full minutes of the film are comprised of a black screen), but they bring a wonderfully uneasy tone to the proceedings right from the start, and, on the flipside, manage to make the scenes outside of the basement seem idyllic (particularly in the haunting final scene, which actually benefits from its predictably in this case). I also LOVE the scene where they find the door to the room where the girl is being held (one credit to writer Trent Haaga’s script - he never bothers to explain why she was there/how she turned zombie/etc. Who cares?). Whereas most directors would treat it as an action scene - they have to bang and pry the door open - they instead present the entire sequence in one slow tracking shot that begins a few hundred feet away (and finishes before it reaches the actors).
I also liked the leads. In this case, the “one bad/one good best friends” dynamic that reminded me of Cirque Du Freak paid off, because the actors in that film were so shitty in comparison to this one, playing similar roles. Noah Segan was particularly impressive; I’ve never seen him in anything before, but his work here (as the “bad” one) is a complete 180 from his lovesick loser turn in Cabin Fever 2. And even though his 90 second role could have easily ended up on the cutting room floor for all the good it did, I liked seeing Michael Bowen as a sort of loser character. He’s played so many hardasses and villains over the years, it was nice to see him take on a “gentle” role. It’s even more impressive that the role - alcoholic would be step-dad - is a cliché, yet he manages to turn the guy into the film’s most sympathetic male character. He may not be perfect, but he’s trying to be a good dad to this kid (whose mom is clearly no prize either), instead of smacking him around and treating him like shit like most horror movie step-dads (William Forsythe in Halloween, anyone?).
With another few drafts I think the film could have been really great instead of pretty good. The idea of the bullies I think is what ultimately sinks the film - everything that they are NOT a part of is pretty great. I would have taken their characters out entirely, which would allow the late developments to come a bit earlier (no reason why the stoner kid couldn’t have been the one to get bitten anyway) and result in a film that was consistently as interesting as its premise. Remake!
What say you?
P.S. My DVD was the R Rated one. There is an "Unrated Director's Cut" that is also available, however the runtimes are identical which means that I doubt any of my issues with the storytelling would be resolved. That version of the disc has a scant extras as well, but no commentary, so it's not worth seeking out, methinks.
As a big fan of the short-lived animated show Clone High, I was hoping Monster High would be roughly the same sort of thing; i.e. a funny look at what it would be like if a bunch of traditional monsters (werewolf, vampire, generic Frankenstein, etc) were in high school together (as opposed to the historical figures of Clone High). But no, Monster High is apparently about how completely boring and unfunny it would be if some demon took a look at what happened when some wizard named Mr. Armageddon took over a school with a giant plant and seeming omnipresent powers and how a few outcasts fought him by running around like jackasses a lot and eventually challenging him to a basketball game.
Needless to say, I liked my idea better.
The biggest problem with this wholly terrible movie is that it’s not funny, ever, and yet that seems to be their main focus (it’s certainly not in the monsters - monster action takes up maybe 10 minutes of the 85 minute film). The script by John Platt and Roy Langsdon (the team that also wrote Lambada: The Forbidden Dance) has our largely terrible actors run the gamut from slapstick to farce to puns to meta-humor to stoner gags, and none of it works (though I suppose if I was stoned out of my mind AND 8 years old I would probably enjoy some of the jokes). The only time I laughed during the entire fucking movie was at the very end, during the aforementioned climactic basketball game, during a recycled but still funny sight gag of a ball circling the hoop in slo-mo for a ridiculous amount of time. It’s been used several times before (usually in cartoons) and is hardly the most brilliant gag ever devised, but compared to the rest of the film, it’s Charlie Chaplin quality.
I also cannot for the life of me figure out who their target audience was. The humor is largely childish, Police Academy-level (later sequels I mean), yet it carries an R rating due to the gratuitous nudity. The monsters all suck, and there’s no real violence or gore, so I can’t see any horror fans really taking a shine to this nonsense. Nor does it carry the basic charm of something like (the somewhat similar) Class Of Nuke Em High, itself no masterpiece but can still at least hold your attention.
It’s also incredibly cheap, and normally I can forgive that in a movie but it seems like they went out of their way to make the film look shoddy. For example, there’s a goddamn jump cut during an establishing shot of the school! Like, was it so expensive to throw a fucking camera on a tripod and let it roll for 10 seconds? And at the top of the third act, our heroes go to talk to the basketball coach about their plan to fight off the bad guy with basketball, and it’s obvious that the team is not actually in the room, because you never see them. Instead they just overdub some walla of the “team” murmuring and saying “Yeah!” or whatever whenever the coach says something worth “Yeah!”ing about. Why call attention to the fact that you couldn’t afford to have the actors come in for the scene? Just take out the overdubbed voices and the scene plays exactly the same as if they weren’t in the room to begin with!
At times it feels they were going for a Rocky Horror type thing (well, more like Shock Treatment, what with the incomprehensible plot and constant cutaways to a guy watching the entire thing unfold onscreen), but they miss the mark entirely, which of course just makes me wish I was watching one of those movies instead (or Christ, even reading the Revenge of the Old Queen script online). It’s rare I see a movie so terrible that I would rather just shut it off and watch something else for the day, but this one came close. The DVD has no extras (though the menu has a few icons that look like traditional Easter Egg buttons), but even if it did I wouldn’t bother. You already stole 85 minutes away from me movie, you’re not getting any more!
I guess my experience watching The Unseen must be like whatever it’s like for someone to sit down with a “Wes Craven movie” and get Music of the Heart, or maybe a guy who really enjoyed LOTR and King Kong going back and seeing one of Peter Jackson’s “early” films like Meet The Feebles. Not that it’s a complete 180 from Danny Steinmann’s other films, but I was pretty shocked that Steinmann would direct a film about a horny mutant baby living in the basement of the home shared by his parents (who are actually brother and sister) and that it would come out so relatively tame.
Of course, he DID take his name off the film due to not being able to finish his own cut, so maybe there was originally some more Steinmann-y touches that were lost. Don’t get me wrong - it’s actually a pretty solid movie, but I was watching it more for the director than the story (which is a Motel Hell/Mother’s Day/Psycho hybrid), and thus was expecting a little more of the sleazy awesomeness that he brought to Friday the 13th Part V.
But that allowed me to be surprised with how the film was focused more on suspense than exploitative gore. The body count is very low (a far cry from F13 V, where characters were introduced solely to be killed 30 seconds later), and they aren’t particularly bloody when they occur. Whether this was by design or the result of the post production troubles, I’m not sure (Steinmann, unsurprisingly, appears nowhere on the 2 disc set), but it doesn’t FEEL like it was edited down to achieve an R or anything.
The writers do a good job of balancing the stories of the victims (three women) and the crazy family, particularly the father, played by Cuckoo’s Nest Sydney Lassick (who has since passed away, as have two other cast members out of the eight in the film. Curse?). There’s a scene just before the halfway mark where we learn that his wife is in fact his sister, information dealt to us by the “ghost” (psychologically speaking) of his father, and Lassick finds the perfect line between crazy and simply pathetic. And Stephen Furst as the titular character delivers a pretty brave performance; he’s caked in fat mutant makeup and wearing a diaper, and his role primarily requires him to roll around on a dirty floor, drink from a puddle on said dirty floor, smack himself in the head, and groan/laugh in typical mentally challenged movie character fashion.
Not quite as successful is the subplot of the main woman’s boyfriend. He serves as the excuse to keep her away from the house for a while so her friends can get killed, which is fine, but the scenes go on for so long and are largely terrible. And he drives away angrily after dropping her off, which of course means he’s going to want to apologize and drive back to save the day. Or not; his “triumphant return” is botched by his bum leg, and it’s one of the funniest thing I’ve ever seen, but still not enough to make up for the jarringly placed and largely dull scenes involving his character sprinkled through the narrative.
One strange thing about the DVD - the color timing is all over the place. It shifts from warm to cool to normal and back again as it goes from shot to shot, and it looks like the print was compiled from different sources. It’s very distracting and given the usual care for their releases, I’m surprised Code Red didn’t take the time to try to match it all better.
Otherwise, they put together a nice package here. I didn’t get the second disc, but it apparently includes long interviews with producer Anthony Unger and the writer, as well as some behind the scenes footage. But disc 1 has an interview with Furst as well as another with Douglas Barr (the boyfriend), both of whom share some funny anecdotes amidst the usual “it was great to work with ____” sentiments. Furst tells a great Steinmann story about how he got him to do a particular stunt, the results of which caused Furst to be injured and never speak to him again. Furst and Unger also provide a commentary, which is moderated by Lee Christian, who I am indebted to as he was the one who photographed my Q&A with John Carpenter last year. Some of his questions are a bit more off track than I’d like (to Furst: “Any memories about shooting Midnight Madness?”) but he keeps both men talking equally, which is always good as I hate when someone is on a commentary and never speaks. Of course, such a lively chat means that the one or two drop dead silent gaps are very noticeable, and the dirt-seeker in me begins to wonder what they were saying that the studio felt the need to excise. It’s a shame they couldn’t get Steinmann to at least do a quick interview, but with tomorrow being Friday the 13th and all, I plan to watch his track for New Beginning to even things out.
So as long as you’re not looking for Steinmann’s usual Grindhouse-y approach, I think you’ll dig The Unseen. It’s a nicely paced suspense tale with two terrific villains and an offbeat tone that I quite admired. Also an old woman firing a shotgun.
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